Embodiments of the present invention provide systems and methods for establishing and supplying maintenance centers in support of enterprises that provide services to consumers, government agencies and businesses. For example, service enterprises may offer communications (wired telephone, wired Internet, wireless telephone, wireless internet, program distribution (satellite, cable, fiber, hybrid), and utilities (gas, electricity, water and sewer). Service enterprises typically rely of inventories of materials and components to provide service to customers with minimal interruption.
For example, a typical program distribution service operating over a hybrid-fiber network may utilize one or more hubs each serving 20,000 subscribers. A typical hub supports from 50 to 100 nodes with each node capable of serving 250 to 2000 subscribers. In order to maintain signal quality and quality of service commitments, trunk amplifiers maintain high signal quality. Internal bridger modules in the trunk amplifiers boost signals for delivery to subscribers' homes. Line Extender amplifiers maintain the high signal levels in cascade after the trunk amplifiers, through the neighborhoods. Taps divide out small amounts of signal for connection to the homes. Nominal cascade limits are up to 4 trunk amplifiers followed by up to 3 line extenders, with more in very rural areas. In suburban areas, cascades typically comprise 2 trunk and 2 line extenders. Because branching is unlimited, the total device count per node may be large despite short cascades. At the downstream end of the program distribution network is the customer premises equipment (CPE). Failure of any of these elements may result in a loss of service for the customer and a loss of revenue for the service provider.
The complexity of a service enterprise makes fault isolation and maintenance a challenging task. The task can be partitioned into four stages:                determining that a failure has occurred or is imminent;        determining what has failed;        determining where in the failure is likely to be; and        determining what equipment is required to remedy, or prevent, the failure.        
Having determined that a problem in a service enterprise has occurred or is imminent, establishing efficient and cost effective systems for assuring the correction of the fault is a challenging task. Properly staffing and routing of field staff is essential to delivering high-quality in field service. Two decisions that determine the effectiveness of the field service are the size of the service area covered by a field service unit (determines the driving costs), and the size of the inventory of spare components that are shared by some number of field service units (determines the stocking and restocking costs).